Early Works Archive

One of her recurring themes has been to de-construct the works of European masters; Picasso has been a particular target. However, the most ambitious and humorous of her ‘deconstructions’ has been the installation

‘A satire that examines the positionof Black people within British society and in particular the art world. Himid replaces the stock characters of Hogarth’s satire with her own contemporary examples: the castrato becomes the art critic, the feeble envoy the funding body and the Countess and her lover become Margeret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

As in the image of 1743, Black people are still marginalized onlookers, but Himid turns Hogarth’s Black servant into the Black artist and the Black child slave into “Ka – the spirit of Resistance”, thereby creating a message of unity and resistance for Black people in this country’.